Digital Trends has a preview of the
recently announcedUltimate
Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack 2: Digistruct Peak DLC for Borderlands 2,
Gearbox Software's RPG/FPS sequel, saying to expect the pack one week from today
on September 3rd (thanks nin). On a related note,
IGN says to expect a Borderlands 2 Game of the Year edition announcement
soon, saying they learned this from "a GameStop source." Back to the preview,
Digital Trends includes word that in addition to raising the game's level cap to 72, the new add-on will also
allow players who have leveled up to set "Overpower" levels to fight enemies up
to level 80. The article explains why they are going this route instead of
simply raising the level cap directly to 80:

The entire world is affected
when you load up a game set to a certain Overpower level; monsters are more
deadly, and they drop more powerful loot. Your skill advancement still caps out
at level 72, but the eight Overpower levels allow you to use this higher-level
gear. Once you’ve unlocked all of the Overpower levels and jump into a max-level
game, you’ll face monsters at level 80+ and find gear rated for level 80 that
you can now use.

You’re probably wondering at this point why Gearbox is even bothering with the
new Overpower leveling system when the new level 72 cap could just as easily
have been a level 80 cap. “If you look at our skill tree, you’ll definitely
notice that we’re running out of skill points,” Reiss says. “We’re trying to
keep the diversity there. We do want players to level up and get more skills and
have a lot of fun with that, but Digistruct Peak adds the icing on top of the
cake, pretty much. More challenge, more adventure, more gear to
collect.”

nin wrote on Aug 28, 2013, 12:03:I don't recall the exact timeframe, but on my last playthrough, it seemed like they'd come after me once a day...

Maybe it is a 24h cool down. They don't spawn on a fixed schedule though. After the cool down period expires it's just a random chance that they'll spawn when transitioning into certain cells.

One thing I missed from FO3 were the random encounters. There's a mod that adds those back to FNV. It's customizable with MCM too. I had to disable it because it caused the game to lock up when traveling between Good Springs and Primm. It was a mod I added mid to late game, so it could have been a conflict with other mods I had added/removed.

Creston wrote on Aug 28, 2013, 14:02:I think that perk only allows you to do magazines, not skill books?

There's two different ones. There is a perk that lets you make magazines, but one of the DLC that adds a recipe for books. I never hunt for books, if I find one I read it and take my skill points, but I don't do like some people and get a list of all the book locations and go collect them. I didn't use the recipes, so I'm not exactly sure how it worked. I know there were recipes for each book that you could get. I think it required 25 or something pre-war books, the clean kind, not the dirty or burnt ones, so initially its use was limited. But that book machine in OWB can be used to convert dirty and burnt books into clean books, basically giving you an almost unlimited supply of books to use for the recipe.

Creston wrote on Aug 28, 2013, 14:02:They're not an issue anymore now as my sniper wastes them before they ever get close, but at level 6 I thought it was a tiny bit retarded. (even more so because the reason the Legion was mad at me was because I killed their small group that burned nipton to the ground, and nobody was there to watch it. How exactly did you know it was ME that did it? Fucking Caesar. He died screaming.)

Yeah I never liked how the factions instantly knew of your bad deeds. That's one thing I liked in Skyrim was that if you committed a crime without witnesses, there would be no bounty. If the crime was witnessed, but you eliminated the witness(es) before they could report to a guard, then there was no bounty. I hope they do something like that for the next Fallout with faction relations.

That's not counting skill books, and with one of them basically giving you a skill book printing press you can easily max out everything.

I think that perk only allows you to do magazines, not skill books?

They shouldn't be coming that often unless you have a mod that increases it

Pretty sure I don't, and I haven't altered the time scale. The first group attacked me just outside of Primm. After finally defeating them I took the rail to just outside Nipton, went through the canyon where the Vipers (try to) ambush you, and you come to that big bridge over the interstate that leads to Novac.

Got attacked by the next group there. It can't have been more than ten minutes between the two.

They're not an issue anymore now as my sniper wastes them before they ever get close, but at level 6 I thought it was a tiny bit retarded. (even more so because the reason the Legion was mad at me was because I killed their small group that burned nipton to the ground, and nobody was there to watch it. How exactly did you know it was ME that did it? Fucking Caesar. He died screaming.)

I never used the .50 in the game. I had one, fully moded and various ammo types, but I left it in my player home. The weight of the rifle and ammo just wasn't worth carrying it. The sniper rifle with it's higher critical chance and critical damage, loaded with JSP hand loads was more effective and weighed a lot less. With a silencer and a sneak attack critical it could bring down a death claw with one head shot and not alert his buddies.

I've been using Paciencia almost exclusively. It does an extra 110 critical damage. I don't even have to headshot things to sneak kill them.

JSawyer's mod reduces the XP rewards from the DLC

In Project Nevada, you can just say how much XP you want to get. Don't take XP boosting perks and play with 33% XP, and you'll go fairly slowly. (too slowly, to be honest. I was having a bitch of a time around Boulder City at level 7.)

Since you haven't played Lonesome Road, I can't explain why I didn't like it without spoiling it.

Alright, I'll just give it a go. If nothing else, I owe Ulysses a good kick in the fucking balls.

Creston wrote on Aug 28, 2013, 00:44:I don't think it really was all that balanced out of the box. Even with the perk every other level, you become basically immortal (with Vanilla play) by level 15, with only Deathclaws still being somewhat of a challenge (and then only until you reach the Gun Runner's shop and buy a 50 caliber rifle.)

Sure, you can max more skills with the extra levels, but what does it matter when the only skills you actively need are

1) A weapon skill2) Speech (to help you get through 80% of the quests.)

Every other skill just makes things easier, but isn't vital.

Every game made with that particular engine, be it Fallout, FNV, Oblivion, Skyrim, whatever, turns into a piece of cake once you get through the first 30-40% or so. (in FNV you basically just have to get to Novac. Get Boone, game over. Or rather, challenge over.)

If I remember, the vanilla FNV with an IN of 10 and the educated perk, you could only expect to max out 4 or 5 skills. The DLC would almost double that. That's not counting skill books, and with one of them basically giving you a skill book printing press you can easily max out everything.

Creston wrote on Aug 28, 2013, 00:44:

nothing that changes the game play. I'm also going to use the JSawyer mod.

That actually changes gameplay a bit. I also really recommend Project Nevada, because it actually makes the game harder.

I meant that I don't want to use mods that add a bunch of new content like weapons, perks, quests, locations etc. I want to keep the game close to vanilla, just tweak it and make it tougher. I considered PN, just the core, but it basically does what JSawer's mod does.

Creston wrote on Aug 28, 2013, 00:44:Btw, tip to the wise: Avoid pissing off the Legion (or the NCR) until you're level 15 or so. After the latest patch, they buffed the assassins they send after you, and they're fucking insane. I was level 6 when I got four level 15 assassins after my ass. Reloaded that battle approximately 30 times. I once managed to kill 3 until the 4th killed me. Even lowering it to Very Easy was still a slog to get through it.

5 minutes later, I got another group. Yay.

In addition to them being ridiculously hard for low-level characters, they pack godly level weapons. So I had a .44 magnum and a Bush Gun at level 7... That's a tad overpowered...

I'm also walking around now with 80,000 caps because I get a group of four walking ATMs every 10-15 minutes.

They shouldn't be coming that often unless you have a mod that increases it. I think there's a cool down of 3 game days before there's a chance for another one to spawn. I was using a time scale of 12, which makes one game day equal to 2 real time hours. The default time scale is 30, which makes one game day go by in 48 minutes. But yeah, at later levels, with the quality of weapons they carry, you're getting 10,000 caps of loot from each hit squad. Of course playing the game with a lower carry weight is going to mean leaving most, if not all of that behind.

There's always a slight stutter in the game when they spawn. I got to know this stutter well. As soon as it happens, crouch into sneak mode. There's usually one Legion guy that runs ahead of the others, he's weaker than the others, so a sneak critical head shot will kill him. The others will panic and flee for a bit, then wander around idle. You can hunt them down and pick them off or just avoid them.

If you change the time scale, you also have to adjust the hardcore rates. It's odd because as you use a lower time scale, it causes the hardcore needs to increase. I didn't notice this because the first thing I did on my first game was set the time scale to 12. It wasn't until I added a dynamic time scale mod in my last game I noticed it. I switched to another time scale mod that was supposed to dynamically adjust the hardcore rates too. I ended up having problems with it and just went back to a fixed time scale of 12.

That's another thing I'm not going to do on my next game is add/change mods during the game. On my last game I sort of modded it as I played. This caused a few problems later on, so once I pick what mods I'm using for the next game, I'm not changing anything.

I liked OWB at first, but it seemed to drag on too long. I actually began to wish it would be over with so I could go back to the Mojave Desert. Lonesome Road I will pretend never happened.

Creston wrote on Aug 28, 2013, 00:44:I actually felt the same about OWB, especially because I was level 45 when I went there, and everything had 600+ hitpoints. Scorpions that can take five shots from a .50 cal rifle are just retarded. (even more fun are the Cazadors with 500+ hitpoins...)

Project nevada has now rebalanced the DLC, so hopefully it'll be less retarded.

Haven't played Lonesome Road yet, planned to do it on this playthrough. is it that bad?

I never used the .50 in the game. I had one, fully moded and various ammo types, but I left it in my player home. The weight of the rifle and ammo just wasn't worth carrying it. The sniper rifle with it's higher critical chance and critical damage, loaded with JSP hand loads was more effective and weighed a lot less. With a silencer and a sneak attack critical it could bring down a death claw with one head shot and not alert his buddies.

I think I was around level 25 when I played OWB. Another thing I didn't like about the FNV DLC is that in addition to the level cap increase, the XP gained in the DLC scaled up with your level. It basically guaranteed that you leveled up at least 5 times in the course of the DLC. JSawyer's mod reduces the XP rewards from the DLC. Since I'll be playing an energy weapon character next, I really should visit OWB. I played it to completion last time, so if I do play it, I'll just rush through the main quest and leave. I'm also going to use a mod that allows all of the DLC weapons to be sold by vendors and gives a chance for NPCs to spawn with them, so I still may skip it.

Since you haven't played Lonesome Road, I can't explain why I didn't like it without spoiling it. The map is linear, but there are a few places where you can go off the beaten path and discover some secrets. But I kind of liked the map, so that wasn't why I didn't like the DLC.

jimnms wrote on Aug 27, 2013, 23:09:I felt that raising the level cap in FNV ruined the balance of the game.... FNV was almost perfectly balanced out of the box, then they had to go and ruin it with the level cap increases with the DLC.

I don't think it really was all that balanced out of the box. Even with the perk every other level, you become basically immortal (with Vanilla play) by level 15, with only Deathclaws still being somewhat of a challenge (and then only until you reach the Gun Runner's shop and buy a 50 caliber rifle.)

Sure, you can max more skills with the extra levels, but what does it matter when the only skills you actively need are

1) A weapon skill2) Speech (to help you get through 80% of the quests.)

Every other skill just makes things easier, but isn't vital.

Every game made with that particular engine, be it Fallout, FNV, Oblivion, Skyrim, whatever, turns into a piece of cake once you get through the first 30-40% or so. (in FNV you basically just have to get to Novac. Get Boone, game over. Or rather, challenge over.)

nothing that changes the game play. I'm also going to use the JSawyer mod.

That actually changes gameplay a bit. I also really recommend Project Nevada, because it actually makes the game harder.

Btw, tip to the wise: Avoid pissing off the Legion (or the NCR) until you're level 15 or so. After the latest patch, they buffed the assassins they send after you, and they're fucking insane. I was level 6 when I got four level 15 assassins after my ass. Reloaded that battle approximately 30 times. I once managed to kill 3 until the 4th killed me. Even lowering it to Very Easy was still a slog to get through it.

5 minutes later, I got another group. Yay.

In addition to them being ridiculously hard for low-level characters, they pack godly level weapons. So I had a .44 magnum and a Bush Gun at level 7... That's a tad overpowered...

I'm also walking around now with 80,000 caps because I get a group of four walking ATMs every 10-15 minutes.

I liked OWB at first, but it seemed to drag on too long. I actually began to wish it would be over with so I could go back to the Mojave Desert. Lonesome Road I will pretend never happened.

I actually felt the same about OWB, especially because I was level 45 when I went there, and everything had 600+ hitpoints. Scorpions that can take five shots from a .50 cal rifle are just retarded. (even more fun are the Cazadors with 500+ hitpoins...)

Project nevada has now rebalanced the DLC, so hopefully it'll be less retarded.

Haven't played Lonesome Road yet, planned to do it on this playthrough. is it that bad?

Creston wrote on Aug 27, 2013, 11:03:Yeah, it's pretty terrible. My Siren already has every useful power maxed out, and in fact already had them maxed out since level 55 IIRC. So yay, 12 new levels of useless powers, and (let's face it) useless health upgrades.

Since I'm replaying FONV at the moment, there's a good example of doing it right. Increase level cap by 5 per DLC, AND give new perks for those higher levels (as well as some new perks for lower levels.)

BL did it the wrong way.

I felt that raising the level cap in FNV ruined the balance of the game. One of FO3's flaws was that even the vanilla game gave too many skill points. It was already possible to max out all skills, but then the Broken Steel DLC raised the level cap and made it possible to max out all skills even before reaching the level cap, which would cause the game to freeze on the level up screen if you had maxed them out. On PC there was a console command to get through it, but if you played it on a console, you were screwed.

FNV was almost perfectly balanced out of the box, then they had to go and ruin it with the level cap increases with the DLC. I just finished a game a few months ago, which was my first time playing it with DLC. I think my character had an IN of 6 at the start, then I bought the implant from the clinic to make it 7. Then you get +2 IN when starting Old World Blues, but you lose 1 IN (which is still +1 from before starting) if you chose to have your brain put back in place of the implants. By the time I hit the level cap of 50 I had maxed out all but 3 skills.

I have a plan to play it at least once more. I'm going to leave the DLC enabled, but put the level cap back to 30 (and not by taking that stupid trait that caps it at 30 and gives you immunity to chem addiction). I'm not going to heavily mod it, just some texture and environmental things to improve visuals, nothing that changes the game play. I'm also going to use the JSawyer mod. I already have a character planed out. I usually do a speech type character on my 3rd game, but with the level increase I ended up maxing out speech late in that last game. I'm thinking I'll still go for speech early, even barter which I've never bothered to put any points in. There were some barter speech checks, and I'm also going go with a low strength (3 or 4), so with JSawyer mod's lower carry weight, barter will come in handy with the limited loot I can carry to sell. My only combat skill will be energy weapons. The only two DLC I'll probably play again will be Honest Hearts and Dead Money.

I liked OWB at first, but it seemed to drag on too long. I actually began to wish it would be over with so I could go back to the Mojave Desert. Lonesome Road I will pretend never happened.

HorrorScope wrote on Aug 27, 2013, 21:48:The only reason they are still flowing out DLC is because the people are speaking with their wallets. Perhaps they are going beyond original design, but it's all in response to what fans want.

It's basically the best coop one can get nowadays. If they pump out quality DLC like Tina's, I'll keep buying.

Razumen wrote on Aug 27, 2013, 13:58:More active abilities would be nice, Gearbox is just lazy imho with only one per character and a crapload of passives that don't do much or are hard to even notice.

The problem with active abilities is that you need a way to activate them. Since the game does need to be playable on a 360 controller you're going to run out of buttons quickly.

Gadzooks wrote on Aug 27, 2013, 16:26:Just to prove that in this case, you really are just all talk, I decided to make just a random build, up to level 55, just to see exactly how much of the sirens skill tree is left:

Notice how not only do you not make it all the way to the max ability in the 2nd tree, there are NO points spend in the entire 3rd tree.

Eh, alright. I thought she was "useful'ed-out" at 55, but maybe I remembered wrong. Maybe it took all the way to 61, but she has basically every useful skill.

And, just for reference, here is a total random build at level 72 (the new level cap for the unreleased DLC). Notice how many skills are still left, STILL including the final trait in the 3rd tree. 59 points left in the talent trees that you CANT take, even at level 72.

The Siren's "final" trait would be Scorn (since nobody would skip Ruin), which is utterly pointless. It does nothing a slag SMG doesn't do (and does better, for that matter.) But okay, I did say "every active skill," and I probably should have said "every active useful skill," since most of the stuff in the Harmony tree is pointless if you play solo.

It's all just percentages of certain things that you never notice in gameplay (I guess maybe the increase fire rate of the commando is noticeable). The large majority of these skills are stuff that happen 'behind the scenes', so to speak.

Again, if that excites you, great. No shirt off my back. The idea of 11 more levels where the only things I get out of it are percentages here and there, don't exactly fill me with the desire to go and get 11 more levels. If it does for you, cool. I'm of the opinion that by just raising the level caps and not actually investing in new skills/perks/powers for players to pick from, BL is doing it wrong. It wasn't so bad in the first UVHM pack, because from 50 to 61 you could get a second top tier power, which is useful in most instances. But getting 11 more levels in the third tier? In essence, it's kinda pointless. (caveat: For the Siren. I've not actually bothered leveling any other classes to 61.)

And sure, the idea of level 80 loot is cool, but it's BL2, so all that will be dropping is white and green level 80 crap.

Gadzooks wrote on Aug 27, 2013, 12:16:The game gets dramatically more fun as you unlock and get to USE more of the talents.

Basically all the talents you have left when you reach level 55+ are the ones that give you +5 damage on an SMG, or swap a weapon faster, or put 3 extra rounds in a clip.

If you find enjoyment in adding those to your build, more power to you, but to me that's kind of irrelevant. The 20% extra damage on an SMG is hardly even noticeable at those high levels, as you'll either kill stuff in half a second already anyway, or it'll kill you in half a second.

My siren has already unlocked every active skill, and every boost to those active skills. The rest she has left is just the few % here, few % there.

Just to prove that in this case, you really are just all talk, I decided to make just a random build, up to level 55, just to see exactly how much of the sirens skill tree is left:

Notice how not only do you not make it all the way to the max ability in the 2nd tree, there are NO points spend in the entire 3rd tree.

So yeah... +5 smg damage and faster reload are far from all you have left to spend points on once you reach 55.

But hey, dont listen to me, or you for that matter, let others fool around in the skill calc and judge for themselves.

And, just for reference, here is a total random build at level 72 (the new level cap for the unreleased DLC). Notice how many skills are still left, STILL including the final trait in the 3rd tree. 59 points left in the talent trees that you CANT take, even at level 72.